How shadows fall
by Ouvalyrin
Summary: You wanted me to be your friend," hisses the fox, "and I'll be the best one you've ever had." - An AU where Naruto is killed at birth and Sasuke is the only one left to find the Kyuubi. Incest, underage, violence, Uchiha massacre alert.


**How shadows fall  
by Ouvalyrin**

Summary: A story where Naruto is killed at birth, and Sasuke is the one who finds the ghost of Kyuubi.

Sasuke is seven when he sees the flicker of red in the forest and hears the warm bright laugh. He hesitates: Itachi told him not to wander and Mother warned him about leaving the trail (Father said nothing). None of them said what to beware of, but Sasuke has heard stories of the demon that gobbles up stray travelers, so he remains on the path and keeps walking. He wishes someone were here with him; but he claimed this. It's his right, no one else has someone walk them home--

The forest has always been a little strange, full of whispers that no one else hears, wavering faces that no one else sees. Sasuke touches his kunai holder and walks faster.

The bushes rustle. Sasuke whirls around, pivoting hard on one foot just like the insturcotrs said, keeing his center of balance strong and freeing his movement, and catches the gleam of eyes in the shadows between the light.

He bites his lip as hard as he can. The transference of fear focuses his attention inward to help him ignore pain. His brother taught him fear is a weakness that he will never overcome but can always focus. When his lip bleeds, leaking blood into his mouth, he licks it away until he can feel the division of flesh, the contour of his bite.

As if he's always been there, a boy is licking at his mouth, tongue lapping at the blood. Sasuke's lip tingles and, abruptly, begins to bleed again. The boy's mouth breathes hot and harsh, his fingers gripping tight around Sasuke's arms like claws, nothing like fingernails. They rip his sleeves easily.

Sasuke stands, blinks, trembles. His head pounds too heavily for him to think; but he is Uchiha. Itachi would never allow an attack like this. His fingers reach for the kunai strapped to his leg with slow, excruciating deliberation.

As soon as his fingers touch the handle, he brings his arm up and slashes at the boy, jumps back and away. His feet land in the dirt, off the well-worn, dusty path. His chest rises and falls with the effort to breathe. His hair falls into his eyes, his lip leaks a red line down his chin.

"Who are you?" Sasuke demands. His voice catches when he sees the red eyes. He's too young to see the Sharingan, even though Itachi got his by the time he was eight. Maybe the boy is related; but his hair is blond and spiky, nothing like any Uchiha Sasuke has ever seen.

The boy tips back his head and laughs. Lost child, Sasuke rambles, stay in the same place. Don't wander away. Be quiet to avoid enemy ninja. The boy looks like he's been hiding for a long time.

"So young," the boy whispers and Sasuke bristles because they look the same age. But the boy's voice sounds nothing like his, full of deep snarls and growls. "So _hungry_..."

The blood on Sasuke's lip won't stop flowing. Sasuke pushes aside the slight dizziness and tightens his grip around the kunai. "Back off!" he yells. "I—I'm a _ninja_."

The boy doubles over and chokes on his laughter, the sound stretching far and high into the distance, circling around Sasuke, as if the boy surrounds him--

The boy presses himself against Sasuke's back, hand reaching out to pull Sasuke's face towards his, to drink more of his blood. Their faces are so close Sasuke can feel the vibrations of every word the boy says, "Do you know what I do to _ninja_, little morsel?" His tongue darts out and into the cut of Sasuke's lip. "I drink their blood." Fingers holding his chin tighten until Sasuke remembers he cannot cry, until Sasuke can hear his bones creak. "I break their bones." A long, sharp smile that pulls back to reveal a mouth full of more sharp teeth than Sasuke has ever seen before. "Then I eat their flesh and laugh all the way home."

Sasuke can't feel skin pressed up against his back, only fur. In the corner of his eye, the boy's face changes, stretching into a long pointed muzzle, ears moving up his head and lengthening, long and triangular. Tails stretch out behind him, one after another, banners of power, nine of them in a fan of fire. A cold nose pushes at his face instead of fingers holding tight onto him. Warmth, burning and eternal, enveloping him.

But the eyes remain the same.

The demon adds, "but only if they can't see me," and darts away. Circles him, the look in its eyes as hungry as before, with all of its long nine tails trailing behind it. "Play with me," it murmurs and darts close to Sasuke, presses against him like a giant cat.

In the alleys of the Uchiha compound, a one-eyed cat hissed and scratched him when Sasuke came too near. But when he brought it food it came closer and closer to him, until it no longer ran. When he touched it, its claws swiped out and Sasuke nursed three parallel scratches on his palm, but the next day it didn't.

Sasuke thinks of this cat and says, voice shaking, "What do you want to play? I—I don't know many games. I'm usually training." He doesn't know why embarrassment steals over him.

The fox stops moving and sits back. Sitting down, it comes level with Sasuke's head. Its eyes meet Sasuke's. "Konoha locked itself to the demons but created its own monsters," it says and grins like laughter lurks in its mind again. "We can start simple, little morsel. You hide, and I find you. The entire forest is open." It licks the side of his face and flinches away. Sasuke thinks of how that cat and steels himself not to move. I am not afraid.

"Run," it suggests, and lies down and closes its eyes.

Sasuke pivots just the way he should and runs until his breath struggles to escape his throat, his kunai still clutched in his hand. He drops it, not knowing why, but doesn't stop to pick it up. The forest appears as dark and strange as before, but Sasuke moves with fluid, natural ease, growing in the back of his mind the dark knowledge that nothing can hurt him here. Not anymore.

The shadows that the light casts welcome him, as natural as breathing. Sasuke climbs into a tree and swings himself through the branches, up into the foliage with only the smallest rustle. The leaves shield him inside of them and nothing feels strange at all.

High up in the tree, covered in leaves and shadows, with the sun sinking slowly into the horizon, Sasuke grins bright and feral.

He can't explain how he feels feels the fox move, feels it hunt for him, but he hides, thinking himself small and invisible and waiting, not daring to breathe.

He doesn't wait for long: the fox runs through the forest faster than he did, tracking him by scent. It finds him after only a minute. It circles his tree and looks up with its eyes glowing gold in the half-light. Sasuke looks down and meets its eyes--

The fox rears up and the tree bows down to King Fox; or perhaps it grows. The fox lifts Sasuke out of the tree by the back of his shirt and lets him fall—Sasuke catches himself on a branch and manages to slow his descent, swinging down onto the ground and landing hard enough to send vibrations through his hands and feet. It noses at his shirt, laps a tongue across his face. Across his skin, Sasuke can feel the scrape of teeth it barely remembers to sheathe.

The fox shrinks down to his size and grins, tongue lolling out of its mouth as it wraps itself around Sasuke, its tails a blanket softer and warmer than anything Sasuke has ever felt. It croons wordless fox songs into his ear until Sasuke yawns and his eyelids close.

Sasuke dreams of being so strong only words like powerful and eternal can describe him. He dreams of trees falling over at his bark and the black thrill of the hunt, of the bewitching crunch of bones beneath his teeth. Of knowing nothing of limits. He dreams of vastness that defies words, of attention, of worship and fear and a terrible admiration--

He dreams of prey rising against him, prey that bites back.

He dreams that he dwindles into something small and helpless enough for prey to kill _(murder—betray!)_ and watches his blood drain out with the knowledge that he could have devoured them, once upon a time. He dreams of fading into myth, of becoming nothing. Of the passage of seven long years where he barks and snarls and remains unheard, unseen, invisible and dead.

He dreams of becoming desperate enough for worship to take it from the child of prey, of gentling his touch because he cannot stand the return to nothing twice, of craving the child's sunbright warmth. He dreams of hating what he has become and knowing he cannot change it.

Sasuke wakes up to the sound of his own breathing gone harsh and jagged, his fingers clenched tight around the grass beneath his hand. The warmth against his side has faded into a memory. When he turns over, he sees nothing but empty shadows and the imprint of a long, long body in the grass.

He sits up. In the black leaves of the trees overhead, the body of his brother crouches. Sasuke stares up into the trees, at the hidden body of his brother. He smiles when he thinks that nothing in this tiny, infinite world of trees and shadows and memories can ever be hidden from him.

"Itachi," he calls, barely above a whisper. The moment of shock as his brother seeks to respond runs along Sasuke's spine like electricity. This is not his forest, not his world, but he is stronger.

Itachi lands where the fox lay and says, "It's late, Sasuke." He reaches out to brush his knuckles against Sasuke's cheek. His fingers catch across Sasuke's forehead, tangle in Sasuke's hair. "Mother and Father were worried."

"I was fine," Sasuke replies, getting to his feet and brushing the loose grass off of him. "I'm not a _baby_," he adds. "I can walk myself home." He looks down. It almost looks like a nest. Or a den, he realizes.

"Despite evidence to the contrary," Itachi murmurs. The tiny quirk of his mouth, the tiny smile, means that his brother loves him. Despite the strangeness, despite the rumors, despite the strange distance that has grown between them. Despite everything.

"You shouldn't be in this forest," Itachi reminds him. "There are dangerous things here."

Sasuke's smile feels brilliant, wide across his face, stretching his facial muscles in a way that should hurt. He hasn't smiled like this for months. "None of them will hurt me," he says, and adds, impulsively, "You're here now."

It's not what he means, but Itachi chuckles and wraps his hand in Sasuke's hair and tugs on it, a teasing gesture that Sasuke has missed, ached for, longed for--

Brother, he thinks, _brother_, like a prayer.

Itachi's hand is cool against his skin. Sasuke wraps his hand tight around his brother's and they walk home in the darkness, in the silence of their words.

Sasuke looks over his shoulder and mouths _good-bye_.

Itachi pauses at the edge of the forest, half-turning, his eyes narrowed and thoughtful, with a look in them that Sasuke cannot read. Sasuke smells fox-scent, dry and musky, and his mouth goes dry in a way he cannot describe: nothing like fear, but with similar elements.

From the moment Sasuke was born, he has belonged to his brother and no one dares to take from Itachi. No one has ever played with Sasuke before. Itachi trains with him, but that is different; that is training, that is _duty_, though Sasuke is not stupid enough to think that Itachi feels nothing but duty towards him. As Uchiha, as the heirs to the clan, they have a duty towards each other and to their family. The clan comes first.

No one has ever played with him before.

Blood has clotted on Sasuke's lip, but Sasuke ignores the revulsion and bites and licks at the cut again, through the dirt and dust and dried blood, until it bleeds, slow, sluggish drops of color. When Itachi is not watching, he leans over and lets it drip onto the ground. Itachi's head turns. Sasuke looks up, but Itachi's gaze turns inward, at some private vision only he can see. He murmurs, "Come, little brother," and tugs on their enjoined hands.

Sasuke quickens his step and knows, during this moment if no other, that his brother wants him most.

_(it could be enough)_

Sasuke toes his shoes off and lines them in the doorway, out of the way. He slips his feet into the small slippers waiting for him and lets go of Itachi's hand.

For a moment Itachi's hand tightens around his own. When it loosens, Sasuke reminds himself that Itachi is just tired. Itachi looked for him for a long time in the dark, after his own training.

"Brother," he says, looking up at the blank face. "Thank you for looking for me." He smiles. _I love you_ is not ever said to Itachi—not by Mother and never Father—so Sasuke tries to say it for them.

Itachi's fingers poke through a tear in the cloth of Sasuke's collar, brushing against the skin of his neck. Sasuke flushes. Tries to pull away and, after a moment, Itachi lets him go.

Sasuke does not know the words to remind his brother, so he looks at the floor and shuffles into the living room where his mother waits.

"_Sasuke_," he hears her sigh _(relief: he's not lost). _ She wraps him up in her embrace—and he is reminded of foxes and warm fur and the scent of earth and blood and life, and his mother feels cold. "Are you all right?" Sasuke presses his forehead against her chest. "A bath ahs been drawn for you." She lets him go and shoos him to Itachi's side. His brother beckons him into the bathroom.

His mouth is no longer bleeding, but the stain has tracked all along his lip and chin, splattering onto his shirt, smeared on the back of his hand. Itachi's fingers travel along the path it has created as he helps Sasuke undress. Sasuke wants to say that he is not a child, that he does not need help for this—but the light in Itachi's eyes reflects nothing, and Sasuke does not know how to speak to this new incarnation of his brother. Does not quite dare to find out.

"What were you doing in the forest?" Itachi inquires. Sasuke cannot see Itachi's expression, only the shadows cast by something new. "You were supposed to come straight home." Then, almost maliciously: "I was waiting for you."

Sasuke trembles, hands making themselves fists, and he says carefully, "I saw something in the forest."

Sasuke had not thought Itachi kept secrets from him, but this silence comes from nothing Sasuke can identify.

"What did you see, Sasuke?" Itachi comes close, his hands on top of Sasuke's, prying them out of the fists they have formed. Itachi is nothing close to adult but he is so much larger than Sasuke, his shadow swarming up the walls of the room, his hands dwarfing Sasuke's. Sasuke has never felt afraid of his brother, never felt trapped or imprisoned; he has nothing to compare the strange lightheaded sensation swooping through him with.

"Just shadows," Sasuke mumbles as Itachi tugs his shirt off, lifting it over Sasuke's head and pulling his arms through. Sasuke fights the urge to cross his arms over his chest, to protect himself from the suddenly intense gaze.

"Shadows of what?" Itachi presses, moving closer. Sasuke can feel the warmth of Itachi's skin soaking into his, and Sasuke wants to lean back but does not dare to move. His hands tremble even within Itachi's firm grasp.

Itachi's mouth grazes his ear. His breath is as hot as the fox's; beneath the scent of tea and sweat, it is the same. His hair falls across Sasuke's face.

"What did you see in the forest, Sasuke?" His hand wraps around Sasuke's hip, squeezing it. Sasuke squeezes his eyes shut, breath coming in tiny, panicked hitches.

"Foxes," he gasps out, "shadows of foxes, that's all, brother, I swear!" and Itachi leans back with an expression Sasuke can almost interpret as smug. He doesn't know what the words that spill from between his lips are trying to say. He doesn't know what Itachi learns.

"Of course that's all, little brother," Itachi soothes, and runs his fingers across Sasuke's naked, dirty back. "Take off your pants and get into the bathtub. You shouldn't worry Mother like that. She thought something had happened to you."

"Nothing happened," Sasuke mumbles, because this almost sounds like his brother, but his fingers hesitate at the tie of his pants. "I was _fine_." He steals a look at Itachi. "_Brother_," he pleads, and Itachi's smile sweeps sudden and strange on his face.

"Of course," he murmurs and gets to his feet. "You're far too old now for this." He trails his fingers in Sasuke's hair. "You're too old for me to touch you like this, right?"

Sasuke does not know what his brother wants him to say. "No," he whispers, staring at the ground, "you—you can," and Itachi's smile widens as he steps out of the bathroom and closes the door after him.

Sasuke takes his pants off and kicks his underwear into the pile of dirty clothing. He lowers himself into the bathtub, the water kept warm by a heater below. His fingers scrub at his skin, working off the dirt mixed with _(his)_ blood. Holds his breath and ducks under, comes up with his hair dripping wet. The water changes color, slowly leeching the memories away.

Sasuke touches the back of his neck and blinks when his hand comes away red, fingers stained with his own blood. That must have been what Itachi was touching. It must have been an accident; what would its purpose be?

He lies back in the bathtub. Everything hurts all at once, spreading through his body to make him want to moan and ache. He smells like fox spit from the rough swipes of its tongue. Bruises blossom on his sides from where he tumbled around. His hands bleed from grabbing too tightly and quickly at too sharp things. He feels cold all the way through, despite the steaming, wet warmth of the water. He watches larger and larger ripples roll away from him and break against the sides of the bathtub: he is shaking and does not know why.

In the forest, it had been so simple and the air had wrapped around him as if he belonged there. He always forgets, once the gates of his family close behind him, how his family stifle their words into silence, stifle him. The Uchiha keep their secrets close to heart, but Sasuke is too young to grasp this knowledge, and always the outsider.

Out of the steam of the water rise the ghosts, with their gaunt, ruined faces and slashed bodies that leak translucent blood into the bath. Sasuke hasn't screamed in years. Not for them. But their blood flows a faint, faded red for the first time, and he can hear screaming now, tiny trickles of noise in the back of his mind.

Sasuke scrambles out of the bath as fast as he can and turns off the heater and watches the water drain, wrapping his arms around his knees and shivering. It's just from the cold, he tells himself and gropes for the towel hanging on the rack.

As he dries himself, he bites his wrist, around the translucent vein. When he lets go, his skin is wet with spit and the teethmarks are small and red. He licks at it, searching for the sense memory of metal and blood and sweat. Wants to peel off his skin for the taste of flesh, rich and red in his mouth like triumph.

Sasuke moans into the bite and lets go of it, the skin unbroken, the vein standing out.

He hasn't stopped shaking and the ghosts are watching.

"Go away," he hisses, then whirls around, grasping at the kunai lying abandoned on the floor. He throws it as hard as he can. It slashes through the ghosts, turning them back into mist and fog; but their screaming stops, replaced by the rising crescendo of their laughter.

Weak, they laugh, weakest of our clan.

"Shut up," he yells, "_shut up_!" Throws the basin at the wall hard enough for it to crack and splinter into slivers of wood. He stands there, panting, chest heaving as he fights for breath beyond the strange blurriness and narrowing of his vision.

Itachi's arms wrap around him, as if Itachi has always been there. Sasuke didn't even hear the door open, but it must have. Itachi lifts him, the towel falling away from his small body, and suddenly his arms are the refuge they have always been, but Sasuke keeps shaking over and over, the fox's bite a sudden bright, wet bloom of pain spreading from the base of his neck, down his spine, into his fingers, working its way into every part of him, through his veins and nerve endings, until all he can see is fire.

There is no safety in Itachi's arms, no safety in his own home, only in the forest where the ghosts do not speak and cannot see, where a fox sits with its mouth wide open and tongue red, laughing.

"What did you do?" Itachi murmurs, fingers tracing the wrinkled flesh of his wrist. Sasuke lies back in Itachi's arms and closes his eyes. He sighs out an answer but isn't sure of what he says, and can only see Itachi's eyes narrow and feel Itachi's hand smooth his wet hair back.

"Enough, Sasuke," Itachi says. "Go to sleep. You must be tired." It sounds like an order.

"I'm not," Sasuke protests, but he sees a bright splash of blood over Itachi's arms, splattered across Itachi's face, and closes his eyes tight against the dream.

"Nothing happened," Sasuke says, staring up at Mother. "I thought I saw something and I got tired and I—I fell asleep."

Sasuke has never lied before, so Mother accepts his weak excuse and smooths her hand over his head as she says, "I still don't want you to, Sasuke."

"I'm not a _child_," Sasuke sneers. It doesn't sound like his voice. Mother's hand stops. Rises to her mouth, which has formed a tiny O. She looks like he just slapped her. "I don't _need_ you or Itachi to walk me home everywhere, I don't need you or Itachi or Father, I don't need you to treat me like I'm _two_," and he shoves himself away from her, away from her fake, sweet scent, because he can smell the blood she has spilled.

He hates the kitchen, and the ghost-eyes of the dead deer and rabbits that watch him with sorrowful eyes, of the gasping, flopping fish on the counter. The man leaning against the counter and another impaled against the kitchen table. The snarl of their mouths as they pick at their wounds and peel them open further, their eyes never leaving the graceful, slim body of his mother.

In his parents' bedroom hangs a sword above their bed, in a plain black sheath on a stylized rack. Sasuke glimpsed it once, but he remembers the blood the sword has drunk and his mother's hand clenched tight around the handle. In his nightmares he thinks of seeing the person his mother used to be.

He understands—it is necessary. They are ninja. They kill: it is their duty, a part of the glory of the Uchiha clan and of the Hidden Leaf Village. But Sasuke listens to the screaming of the dead and touches them without trying or wanting to, and that is something very different.

He stands there, surrounded by the dead eyes of the animals and the alive ones of his mother, and at last her voice is drawn out of her. "I'm sorry, Sasuke. You're—you're growing up quickly, aren't you." It comes out reluctantly, as if her heart is breaking. "Just as fast as Itachi." Her face shifts into an unfamiliar expression. Sasuke feels jerkily, forcefully adult as he stares up at her, at the new shadows of her face.

An apology lingers behind his teeth, resting on his tongue.

This is his mother who is asking him this, and not his father, Father who doesn't care, because Sasuke is not good enough. The apology dies.

One day Father will love him. Sasuke loves his mother but her approval is freely given, and not what Sasuke wants. Not what Sasuke craves.

"You can't treat me like a baby anymore," Sasuke says, a seven-year old boy giving orders to his mother, and tilts his chin up. He feels like Itachi for a dizzying, painful moment, and the screen door bangs shut behind him as he runs, before he can catch the surprised shape of her eyes.

Sasuke makes his way to the Academy alone. He runs through the forest without even a glimpse of the fox. The sour, heavy taste in his mouth could be disappointment; it could be something new. He arrives to class ten minutes early and takes his seat in the front row, staring at his hands, trying to imagine Itachi doing this. Trying to imagine Itachi sitting through lectures on the rules of the _shinobi_, reciting each word with as much purpose and care as each student does. He wonders if Itachi found it stupid too.

Sasuke stares at the teacher. Did he ever teach Itachi? Does he look at me now and see Itachi's shadow?

Sasuke, his breath catching in his throat and his heart beating a tattoo against his ribcage, wants to kill anyone who sees him as nothing else. He is _strong_, the top of his class, but _not good enough_. It is difficult to be the younger son, harder than to be the older.

He wonders, fleetingly, what would have happened if he had been born ahead. His mouth twists into a smile too bitter, too strange for his face, but it feels as natural as his laughter as he realizes that age doesn't matter. Itachi would still cast a shadow longer than Sasuke could see.

"Uchiha-kun," the teacher interrupts. Sasuke jerks his head back to stare at his teacher and thinks, for the first time, I will be stronger than you could ever dream of. The first coherent desire. "Answer the question," the teacher reminds, and sudden, swift laughter—not quite laughter, but _titters_, mocking and quiet—overtakes the classroom.

Sasuke says blankly, "go to hell." The kunai the teacher used to demonstrate spins through his fingers in an easy, whirling pattern. Sasuke remembers the taste of flesh and blinks.

He doesn't understand what happens when his eyes are open, but he senses the fox urging him on as he brings it the corpse. The fox approves, its muzzle snapping open as it devours the flesh, then licking blood off its fur before turning its attention to Sasuke.

Sasuke can breathe only between his quiet, hitching sobs that seize each gasp of air and render it useless.

"He's _dead_," he whispers, and the fox shakes its head.

"He's standing right there," it points out. Sasuke turns to see his teacher staring at him like he's a monster and something like understanding slowly dawns--

Sasuke blinks and says to his teacher, "I don't know," and the shocked murmur of the classroom escalates. Stuck up, precocious little Uchiha brat, doesn't know the answer, what a _joke_.

His teacher stares at him and commands, "See me after class, Uchiha-kun." Sasuke cracks his neck and looks away, not sure about the dream, the vision of a possible future.

"Yes, _sensei_," he murmurs obediently and stares at his hands.

He could have done it.

He doesn't dare meet anyone's eyes in the playground, choosing instead to sit on a swing, toes almost brushing the ground. The forest looms at his back as a little boy stares into a world he should know.

He's in the accelerated class. Most of his classmates are older than him. He's not the strongest in the class, but the margin between them is close, and every day Sasuke narrows the gap. He's number three now. In a few weeks, maybe number two. And only a few days after that until number one. And even then, Father won't _care_--

A hand falls on his shoulder. Sasuke looks up, into the smiling red eyes of a boy he knows better than himself and counts the scars slashes on each cheek. One, two, six. Three on each side, horizontal lines that look intentional.

"Come on," the fox-boy beckons, so Sasuke stands up and goes, leaving behind this strange world. The fox-boy's eyes hypnotize him. "What do you need them for?" it asks, shoving its shoulder against Sasuke's. "They're nothing compared to you."

"I don't," Sasuke says, "I don't, I don't."

The fox-boy pushes his face close to Sasuke's. Its breath smells like ashes. Its skin burns. Sasuke closes his eyes and swallows. Sweat beads on his upper lip, on his forehead. Everything moves so slowly, everything is so quiet. This is terror.

"Then don't go back," it says. Sasuke opens his eyes and is helpless to refuse. "If you don't need them, you don't have anything tying you to them." Its mouth moves into something like a smile, rough and sarcastic and adult, jarring on a face Sasuke's own age. "He'll kill you if you stay."

Sasuke snaps, "he would _never_ kill me."

The fox-boy snorts, "Yeah, _right_," and vanishes.

Sasuke doesn't want to prove the fox right, but as he walks back into a world where he is nothing, its words ring over and over in his head, and at last when the bell rings and he believes in escapes, the instructor calls after him: "Wait, Uchiha-kun, I wanted to speak with you."

The instructor leans forward, as if he's about to reach out to Sasuke, but catches himself. Sasuke is grateful for this: he does not want unfamiliar hands on him.

"Is everything all right with you?" the man inquires, but the look in his eyes could seem warm if the heat of something much hotter did not linger on Sasuke's skin. Sasuke looks back at him, trying to school his face into something approaching stupidity. He's never done this before. "With your family?" the man adds. What the man says between the silences of his words is a lie. Sasuke won't believe it.

"I'm fine." Sasuke shrugs. "Nothing's wrong." Stares straight into the man's eyes, which reflect as clear as glass and just as empty.

"Are you sure?" and this time the man does reach out, does touch Sasuke's shoulder. His fingers curl into the cloth of Sasuke's shirt. "You can tell me. I can help you." Sasuke jerks away.

His mouth curls up in an accidental shape, but he doesn't regret even the words he spat at his mother let alone this. "Of course you can," he sneers, like a bark of laughter from a vulpine mouth, and bows low. "_Sumimasen_, _sensei_, my brother is expecting me."

He doesn't expect the lines to cross the instructor's face, doesn't expect him to look so tired and bitter as he says, "Of course he is," in a tone that makes Sasuke want a heart beating in his hand. "Your brother..." and the man looks up, "is not you. He isn't who you have to be."

Sasuke stares at him, trying to understand such strange words, but the man turns his head away and Sasuke backs out of the room, which has grown hot and stifling, heavy with secrets he thought exist only in the halls of the Uchiha compound. He bows again, suddenly unsure, robbed of that strange, sarcastic confidence filling him only a minute ago. Just a boy, again.

Outside the air tastes clearer, fresher. Sasuke closes his eyes and breathes in deep, sucks it in and tries to hold it inside. The air tastes sweet as it gushes back out as he exhales, and Sasuke opens his eyes to the fading afternoon. The sun has splashed dying streaks of paint across the sky. The sky is on fire. The air tastes sharp and hot, from the summer that comes roaring and crackling, drying and leeching moisture to leave the world a dry, browned husk. Sasuke likes it; welcomes it. It feels like home.

School's over. Summer's here.

Sasuke wants to laugh at the man who took all year to speak to him, but as he starts to walk, he wipes the man's face out of his memory easily. School doesn't matter. The Academy is full of nothings and no ones. Sasuke can feel strength stirring in him, padding slowly on giant, silent paws, looking at the world through shining red eyes: a strength that can eat the moon and drink the night sky.

The fox comes, blond-haired and red-eyed, this time with scars like whiskers on each cheek. Sasuke, not really understanding, lets it drink at his blood, lets it lap at his face with its soft human tongue. It—needs him. It wants him. Not entirely out of its own choice, but it needs him more than air and warmth and food.

It's...good.

Sasuke slips home long after night has draped an arm across the sky, but Itachi has a mission and doesn't know. Mother's eyes have darkened, as if she's been hit but only on the inside. Father stares at him and says if he can't handle the responsibility of coming home on time, he'll have to be walked. Sasuke feels as if he has just noticed the dark skies of his own home, where the stars and moon have already vanished.

Sasuke snorts. "Come on, _Father_, like you even care."

His head rings from the force of Father's slap, his face stinging a bright red splash of pain, and he stares up as his father tells him, "You will not speak to me that way." No remembrance of the words, only their weight, their laughter and their power.

Itachi comes home the next afternoon, when Sasuke is crouching in the forest with his hands buried in the dirt and his bare feet leaving clear imprints, and Sasuke's heart leaps into his throat and he runs forward, out of safety, to greet him.

"Niisan," he cries, "you're _back_," and this time the blood on Itachi's clothes and hands and face is no illusion.

"Sasuke," Itachi says, and opens his arms wide. Sasuke skids to a halt, staring at the apparition. "Won't you give your older brother a hug?" Itachi's smile is wide and frightening, the look in his eyes like nothing Sasuke can describe. He looks, Sasuke thinks numbly in that terrified moment, as if he could kill Sasuke and enjoy it. _(eat the moon and drink the sky)_

"Niisan," Sasuke whispers and wants to run. _(chase hunt kill PREY)_

Itachi strides towards him and kneels down. Sasuke stares at the handle of his sword. A bloody handprint wraps around it, the size of Itachi's hand. He whispers to himself, but Itachi—sharp-eared, beautiful, deadly Itachi—hears it and makes him repeat it, grasping Sasuke's chin in two of his too-long fingers and forcing his head up.

Sasuke feels small, and weak, and helpless, and wishes he'd never seen his brother come home.

"...How many?" Sasuke asks, eyes hot with the beginnings of tears, and wonders if Itachi laughs as he kills. If so, it is the only time Itachi laughs.

Itachi's smile is so, so strange.

"Oh, little brother," he whispers, and touches a hand to Sasuke's forehead, smearing blood across his skin. His voice rumbles with satisfaction, with dark, dark laughter. "Does it matter?"

"_Itachi_," Sasuke pleads, but Itachi does not let go, only holds him closer. Sasuke's nose fills with the coppery, harsh tang of blood. When Itachi finally steps back, Sasuke's shirt, hands, face, are red. Itachi's fingers brush his lips, touching the blood spotted there.

Sasuke doesn't dare look up.

Itachi says, voice odd, "You look good like this, little brother," and walks away. His hand stays too long against Sasuke's skin, stealing the warmth earned. Sasuke would run, but Itachi has always been faster than him, and right now Itachi looks at him like prey. Sasuke remembers the nightmare of Itachi's hands on his shoulders, of Itachi's teeth at his throat, of Itachi's claws in his flesh, and cannot remember if it is true.

He follows Itachi inside; his feet rise and fall to Itachi's beat, his heart beats at Itachi's command. Sasuke never minded before.

The blood shocks Mother, though she acts as if she cannot see it. Itachi gives her that not-right smile again and says something to her that makes her blanch, makes her reach out for Sasuke; but her arms fall short, and Sasuke despairs.

More than anything else, Sasuke wants someone to save him.

He helps Itachi wash the blood off of his skin and hair, picking up the scrubbing brush and handing him the soap. His hands are too small to do the job properly, his arms too weak, but Itachi lets him try, his eyes dark and amused.

Everything is dark, these days, but Sasuke does not acknowledge the thought, because that would be giving in to the other thoughts that crowd his mind, that wait to be heard and felt. (that he has already heard and felt but refuses to understand, refuses to vocalize. name the demon and it loses its power over you, but sasuke knows this to be a lie.)

Sasuke stares at his feet. Mother, do you know what I'm doing? What Itachi is doing? Do you know and not care—am I too weak? No. _No_. Please, I'm strong, I will be stronger, but please--

Sasuke gives Itachi the towel and does not watch Itachi dry himself, aware of Itachi's eyes on him.

"You have blood on you," Itachi says softly, as if he does not remember where it came from. "I'll draw you a new bath." Sasuke looks up in time to see something odd flit through Itachi's eyes. "Little boys shouldn't be so bloody."

You like me that way, Sasuke's mind whispers but doesn't dare vocalize. Instead he nods and focuses on his hands, on his bent knees, on anyplace but the long, lithe body of his older brother. _Protect me_.

"Sasuke," Itachi says after a too long silence, "get in." He gestures to the bathtub, where steam rises out of it slowly, curling in the air like smoke. He doesn't smile.

"Right," Sasuke mutters, trying to swallow back the bile in his throat. He has to undress. His fingers are shaking too badly to undo the ties, and as Itachi pulls his shirt over his body and carefully unlaces his pants, Sasuke wants the cool silences of the forest, the bright flames of the fox, so bright they can burn away every bad memory.

Itachi's fingers ghost over his hips.

Sasuke bites back the tears—I'm not weak—and gets into the bathtub. Itachi stands over him, eyes gone strange again, emotions closer to guilt in them now, closer to the emotions brewing in Sasuke. It does not make Sasuke feel. Sasuke wants Itachi's flesh between his teeth, wants the sting of his kiss to burn Itachi's skin like acid.

Itachi does not touch Sasuke, but Sasuke wishes he would. It's—worse, in a way, having Itachi's eyes so hotly invading, with the knowledge that this is shame, this is wrong, this is weakness lurking in them. Sasuke knows that if he were strong enough, this would not happen, Itachi would not even think this. _(but everyone is weaker than Itachi)_

Sasuke's breath catches in his throat. Itachi's smile's are rare enough to be treasured but Sasuke wants only to forget this one. Itachi's face is almost open enough to be confused. He takes a step back, breathes "Sasuke" like it's a prayer, some kind of salvation. The idea would make Sasuke uncomfortable, but this—this sounds like his brother again. Horrified and shocked but his _brother_. _(PROTECT ME)_

"Itachi," Sasuke says, his voice reaching out instead of a hand, and Itachi backs away further, and whispers, "Sa- Sasuke," his voice gone strange but in a way that makes Sasuke afraid for Itachi and not himself.

It's then that Sasuke knows his brother can be weak too, and the thought comes slowly and reluctantly (to the beat of wardrums)—if Itachi is not the strongest, who is?--but it comes. Sasuke presses his hand to his mouth, so hard that his teeth sink into his flesh, and he expects himself to cry, to have to choke back his sobs, but all he can do is scream, like a wounded animal.

Sasuke jerks away from the arms that envelop him, batting blindly at the long dark hair and pale face, his hand catching Itachi's cheek and raking nails down his skin--"_Sasuke!_" Mother cries, and Sasuke is frozen.

"_Mother_," he manages to say, and she kisses his forehead and presses his face to hers.

Sasuke stares down at the water and sees the long, pale red tendrils float from his hand where his teeth ripped into his flesh, and sees only blood.

It all comes down to blood.

Mother wraps him up in a towel. Dries him off and bandages his hand, her expression written in a language Sasuke has not learned. She interrupts Itachi's questions to Sasuke, hands Sasuke his food, asks him what Itachi normally would. Sasuke picks at his food. It all tastes like ashes and dust, paling to the remembrance of bones that crunched bewitchingly in a mouth full of teeth like knives. Little preythings that shrieked and flailed and tasted all the better for it.

"Are you feeling all right?" Mother asks him the next morning when she thinks no one can hear, but Sasuke can see shadows and knows that Itachi is always near.

"I'm fine," Sasuke says, the words struggling to push them between his suddenly thick lips, around his strangely heavy tongue. "I don't know why everyone is worrying."

She tries to touch him. Sasuke slaps her hand away, whirling around and snarling. "Don't _touch_ me, woman!"

She looks at him with shock, with horror, like she doesn't know him.

Sasuke tries to say, "I'm sorry," but she cuts him off, shaking her head.

"You're growing up so quickly," she marvels, and her hand twitches as if she means to touch him. "It seems like only yesterday you were my little Sasuke-chan, wanting a hug or a kiss or a cookie."

You are seven years old, her eyes would say if Sasuke could meet her gaze.

"Don't leave me behind like your brother did, okay?" and this time her smile is so bright and painful it hurts Sasuke to look at it for long. His heart feels tight and squeezed and painful.

"You said that already," Sasuke mumbles, staring at the ground. "But. Uh. I'm sorry."

He still doesn't want her to touch him. Her hair is too long and her face too pale, her eyes too dark. All that is missing are the slashes beneath each eye.

"I have to go now," Sasuke whispers and runs away, as if that isn't all he ever does.

"Weak thing," the fox says later, and there is a condescending amusement in its voice that makes Sasuke bristle and show his teeth in a gesture he doesn't understand. The fox's paw catches him on his side and rolls him over. A paw against his back, pinning him down, and red eyes staring down at him with the sunlight in its gaze.

"You want to be strong?" it asks him. Sasuke tries to lift his head. A sharp flicker of pain emerges on the back of his neck, against the base of his spine, like teeth scraping skin. It re-opens the cut that Itachi touched. Sasuke doesn't know why the fox keeps doing this. "You want to destroy worlds?"

Sasuke says, into the grass and dirt, "No."

The fox huffs, and suddenly there are knees pressing into his back and hands holding his arms down, and human breath on the back of his neck and human tongue tracing the opened cut. "Then what do you want, little morsel?" inhuman voice demands.

Sasuke manages to get his knees under him, manages to buck his back up and force the fox off. The fox jumps, landing several feet away so lightly the dirt barely stirs around its fingertips and toes. The fox's mouth opens wide. It's grinning, watching his face, as its tongue licks around his mouth.

"You have a bloodline limit," it says. Sasuke's blood stains its teeth faintly pink to match the deep red tongue. Its eyes narrow even though its face never changes. "Want me to get rid of it for you, human? You'd be happier if I did." It comes close, so fast Sasuke can't see the movement. It leans forward, cheek brushing cheek. Sasuke grits his teeth and doesn't back away. It feels human. "You'd thank me for it, eventually. No more expectations, no more not being good enough, because you won't even be _considered_." It bumps its cheek against Sasuke's, and Sasuke understands with brilliant, frightening clarity, that this is a gift, in the best words that the fox knows, in the language of laughter and snarls and power. "You could do whatever the hell you wanted. Bloodlines are curses, little morsel. Meant to dig deep into your mind and make you crave what destroys you, given to humans who dared to lie with demons and all of their descendants."

It pushes him over, ignoring Sasuke's yelp as he falls. Fox fur against his chest, unchanged eyes staring straight at him. "You gave me life, little morsel"--you, prey, have given me, predator, life--"and I am not entirely ungrateful." Its laugh is dry, sardonic, strangely human and nothing close. "Humans always want something."

Sasuke wants never ending forest and flickering, blistering heat like color in the edge of his vision and hands on his shoulders and being good enough and everything. He wants to be able to hurt someone and be hurt back. He wants to be equal.

His mouth is dry, but he manages to lick his lips.

"I want you to be my friend," he whispers against the solid weight on his chest. The fox draws back with a sound like the air is cracking.

"I could give you power unimaginable," the fox laughs and laughs, "I could make the world _tremble_ for you, little morsel, I could tear open the _sky_, and you ask—you ask for _this_." The last word comes out in a harsh puff of breath that crackles the air, sends a wave of scorching, burning heat out to strip the moisture from the world. It dries and peels Sasuke's skin and he wants more.

"Yes," Sasuke wishes, "_please_," and it seems as if the fox cannot stop laughing and never will, its long head tilting back and pointing at the sky as its mouth opens and sharp, snarling barks erupt, and the fox grows, and grows, until it seems as if it could blot out the sun, as if that is how it should be.

The fox stops. It bends its enormous head down and says in a voice that rolls like thunder, "You want to be _friends_ with me?" Laughter still lurks in its eyes, waiting to pour forth and envelop Sasuke, to drown him beneath its volume. Sasuke wants to pluck its eyes out and squish them between his _(claws)_ fingers.

He almost throws up, and the fox looks down at him with a look Sasuke cannot see and would not understand, and it repeats, "Konoha created its own monsters to replace the demons they locked out." Sasuke doesn't understand its words but the fox is smaller, human-shaped with clothes and with fingernails that are only slightly like claws, and it looks at him and says, "As you wish," and its smile is only a little mocking.

Sasuke remembers the size and shape of a fox so large it could eat the sun, but when he looks at Itachi, his brother's shadow looks even larger than before.

"You shouldn't play alone in the forest," Itachi says calmly as the shadows melt off of his skin. "You might get hurt. You might get lost."

This is his brother.

Those are his brother's eyes, darting to the fox but slightly off, as if he is only guessing. The fox doesn't even to cast Itachi a glance. Glancing at Sasuke and jumping, leaping, landing behind Itachi and growing taller. A blond man with the same spiky hair and smirking red eyes, his hand reaching around to trail across Itachi's neck, to fall through his hair. Strangely intimate and nothing before the pounding in Sasuke's ears and the snarling of his heart.

Itachi doesn't seem to notice, reaching out to trap Sasuke's wrist in his fingers. Sasuke is too distracted to protest, glaring at the fox and trying to hiss _stop that_ as loudly as he dares.

"What is it, Sasuke?" Itachi asks, stilling. His eyes dart from one corner of the forest to the other. His entire body has frozen, every muscle under perfect control. Itachi is control. Itachi is--

"Afraid to live," the fox murmurs, and slashes a hand through Itachi's chest. No wound sprouts like a dark flower, no blood wells and spills. Sasuke cannot breathe.

The fox withdraws, but the gleam of its eyes remain in every shadow Sasuke sees, its body reflected in every drop of liquid. Sasuke thinks if he looked in a mirror, he'd see the fox in the mirror of his own eyes; and looks into Itachi's.

There is nothing there but Sasuke's image. Sasuke tries to feel relief.

"Nothing," Sasuke croaks, "nothing," and he tries to pull free, but Itachi's grip is like iron _(so strong)_ and Sasuke is only seven-almost-eight.

For a moment genuine hurt splashes on Itachi's face, which means Sasuke has the power to hurt his brother. It is. Disquieting. It should not be this way. Cannot be this way. It is _wrong_ and Sasuke looks away from it but knows he cannot apologize, because nothing is wrong.

"You're lying," Itachi comments. "There's something in the forest, isn't there?"

Because his brother is a genius and can read strangers' body language perfectly, and because Itachi has known Sasuke for years. No secrets allowed. Everything that is Sasuke's is Itachi's by default because Sasuke has always-always-always been Itachi's.

"Yes," Sasuke mumbles, and looks over his shoulder where the elongated shadow of something too large to be seen moves, a shape in the shadows that could almost have ears and nine tails.

Itachi does not look behind him. "What is it?" he asks, and Sasuke says, hesitatingly, "I don't know."

The fox appears and twines its fingers in Sasuke's other hand. Its claws scratch against Sasuke's palm, three long red lines all the way down to his wrist.

"Come back," it orders, and licks the back of his neck, which begins to tingle anew.

Sasuke does not look down, does not stumble, does not shudder.

He wants more than the fox can give to him.

Sasuke slips out the back door, locking it carefully behind him and hanging the key on a cord around his neck, beneath the scoop-necked collar of his shirt. His heart races the way it always does when he sneaks out. Youngest in a house full of the best ninja of the village, second son to an entire clan of ninja. It's rare that he manages to sneak out.

But the night belongs to him in a way Sasuke cannot explain. Tts cool fingers wrap around his wrists to guide his movements, to soften his footsteps, to quiet his heartbeat. Sasuke smells fox-scent and sees the telltale flicker of red, glowing bright in the forest ahead.

He licks his lips, and runs.

The forest welcomes him, the wind stirring his hair with a sigh of relief. Sasuke's foot pushes against the dirt and he searches for the fox, jumping through the trees and darting over roots, trying to find the strongest, trying to track what he knows he can, if only he can remember how--

And then he catches a glimpse of something strange and red, winding through the trees, something that he cannot smell but only see, and sees that it is acrid and bitter, if he could find the words to explain how. Follows, eyes bright and shining, caught up in a game, in the thrill of the game, the _chase_--

Stops, waits, freezes, heart hammering, and the thrill of the chase is nothing like the thrill of stopping, of watching, of knowing what will happen—and the fox lands hard against his back, pushing him down, rolling him around, and Sasuke feels another boy's body against his own and stares into the laughing red eyes of the boy who drank his blood.

"Stay," the boy hisses and rubs its scarred cheek against Sasuke's.

Sasuke doesn't say, "No," but he does say, "I have to go back. I only came out here because you wanted me to." Lie. He wanted to come here too.

"I want you to stay," the boy says, and Sasuke catches the thread of a thought in the fox-mad eyes: I am nothing without you.

It should scare him, but Sasuke knows what it is like to be unwanted and forgotten. His fingers do not shake as he touches the boy's bare shoulder.

"My brother," Sasuke begins, and as soon as the words escape the fox-boy's eyes darken into a color closer to the Sharingan of Sasuke's dreams, and he knows that he shouldn't have said them, "my brother knows you're here. He knows I'm out here." Because Itachi does.

"I'll kill him for you," the fox-boy promises, "ask me to and I will," and Sasuke feels terror rise up in him and he says, "No, _no,_" pushes away the bare body his own size and height and weight, and runs madly into the light, away from the creeping strangeness of a forgotten fox-demon-boy--

Stops.

"Don't kill Itachi," Sasuke orders, "you can't, he's _Itachi_, he's my brother, I love him."

The fox-boy is crouching, staring at him with its head cocked, watching him with curiosity before it tilts his head back and laughs, louder than ever before, and says, "_Love_? You are _prey_, you are _meat_, you live like mayflies, how can you ever understand love?"

The fox-boy whirls in front of him, faster than lightning, and says, "_Stay_, lost little morsel, and perhaps you will learn something of love."

It leans forward, its cold black nose a strange, sudden shock, and it presses him to the ground and wraps him in its fire bright fur, and its claws catch in his skin to draw thin scratches down his flesh, and it says: "Do you think your brother loves you?"

Sasuke's hand curls up into a fist but the fox is like so much smoke and air, and Sasuke is still not good enough.

"You wanted me to be your _friend_," hisses the fox, "and I'll be the best one you've ever had." It means it, every word slipping out of the barely human mouth, because human mouths aren't filled with teeth as if that's their only purpose, to bite and rend and chew and hurt. "I'll make you face every fear, every little angry thought that's ever flitted through that tiny skull, and I'll make sure you know who you are." Its eyes are shining with malevolent, yellow light that turns its fire bright eyes closer to orange. "Because I _love_ you."

Sasuke trembles, shakes, tries to back away, but there are teeth nipping at his throat, paws bearing him down, a heavy, impossible weight on his chest, as if he cannot breathe. Small claws scratch at his skin and that mouth opens wide and there is the glimpse of eternity, of infinity.

"Do you know," it whispers, "what your brother is doing in the name of love?"

And Sasuke hears what the fox hears.

Knows what the fox knows.

His brother's sword, flickering through flesh as if it is made of light, as if the world bends around its blade. The spray of blood across the wall, slashing across the tatami mats. The spill of his family's blood.

"No," he says, "_no_," and Sasuke tries to get up, tries to claw his way back, but the fox stops him with a flick of its will and it says, "You wished for a friend who would protect you." It bends its beautiful, red head, and says: "Do you accept?"

"Yes," Sasuke says, "_yes_. Give it to me. I want it!"

Doesn't even think about the words that come out of his mouth, at the light of the fox's eyes as its mouth stretches wide enough to swallow the moon. Doesn't know why the fox's laughter is silent but drills straight into his head, tears into his psyche. Fox shadows scattered behind his eyes, claw marks down every memory, fire in the teeth of every smile. Sasuke can only shut his eyes and try not to burn.

When Sasuke opens his eyes the world is a bright wash of red, and the fire in his veins feels as if it's meant to be there. Everything is so slow: the wind drags on the leaves of the trees and as the blades of grass bend he can hear them creak. No fox before him, just a fox inside, and he sticks his tongue out to see if it has gone long and pointed but it is just the same.

But when he looks at his hands he can see that his fingernails are long and sharp, and when he tries to break one he cannot even bend it. When he runs his tongue over his teeth he almost cuts himself. When he hears the fox laughing, he touches his ears to see what has happened to them; but that change is on the inside, where it matters the most.

_Eyes to see them, ears to hear them._ _Claws to rip them, teeth to kill them_, the fox says, and Sasuke turns his head to the place where he has grown up, where hands held him in the air and older brothers carried him on their backs.

(the night is his)

(he will make the world tremble and eat the moon and remind this place full of fat smug prey WHO is the predator WHO is the fox)

(oh yes)

If a part of Sasuke does not want to kill his brother, wants to scream and howl and cry instead, wants to beg for answers, it died before Sasuke ever opened his red, red eyes.

Sasuke laughs and runs a hand through his hair, through his soft black fur, and tugs out a strand, three long strands. Itachi used to touch his hair as if he could not believe it was real. He lets them fall, and before they've reached the ground, he's at the entrance of the gate, balancing on the balls of his feet and waiting for the challenger to come to him.

(but kyuubi no youko is stronger than it is possible to believe)

He leaps the gate. The wards rip as his passing, useless shreds of paper. He knows the way. He isn't wearing shoes anymore, but his toes clench tight into the wood, burning chakra footprints as he goes. So strong he calls fire to himself, so much fire in him it pours from beneath his fingernails and out his feet, so that his eyes are the color of flames that scream and reach and are always hungry. If he looked behind he would see his path outlined in scorch marks and flames, but he can smell its hot life and hear its flickers and does not have to.

The smell of blood hangs rich and thick in the air. It makes him hungry, makes him laugh. He was stupid to think they would ever love him, stupid to think Father would ever see him. Sasuke wants to rip Fugaku's throat out and bury his face in the spurt of blood. He wants to say: I am stronger than your useless mind could DREAM (can you see me now) and I am your GOD.

And Itachi.

Sasuke can't think of him as brother but instead as challenger, instead as threat. Sasuke was a ninja. He knows what to do with threats. Sasuke is a fox. He knows what to do with challengers.

He follows where the scent of blood is strongest, and comes to his parents' room. He stops then, crouches, outside of the doors where he can smell father and mother, unconscious and hurt. Alive. It doesn't matter. Itachi smells like nothing, but he can track him by the absence.

Sasuke laughs to himself, runs his tongue over his lips, and bares his teeth.

Then he pushes the door open and screams, and his brother steps out, and he knows, oh, he knows what moves Sasuke, what Sasuke has found, and Sasuke makes his voice tremble as if _he_ is unaware and he says: "Itachi, you _killed_ them."

He can already taste Itachi's blood.

(and oh, how the shadows fall, how the moon rises, how there are only laughing foxes who will never die)


End file.
